Welfare in Finland

Created almost entirely during the first three decades after World War II, the social security system was an outgrowth of the traditional Nordic belief that the state is not inherently hostile to the well-being of its citizens and can intervene benevolently on their behalf.

According to some social historians, the basis of this belief was a relatively benign history that had allowed the gradual emergence of a free and independent peasantry in the Nordic countries and had curtailed the dominance of the nobility and the subsequent formation of a powerful right wing.

In addition, the citizens of the Nordic countries have the legal right to the benefits provided by their welfare systems, the provisions of which are designed to meet what is perceived as the collective responsibility to ensure everyone a decent standard of living.

Finnish social expenditures constituted about 7 percent of the country's gross domestic product in 1950, roughly equal to what Sweden, Denmark, and Norway were spending.

In response to the slowdown of the world economy after 1973, there was some shifting of social burdens to the state, which improved the competitiveness of Finnish companies abroad.

Finland's welfare system also differed from those of its neighbors in that it was put in place slightly later, and it was only fully developed in the decade after the coalition government in 1966 between the Social Democrat and the agrarian Centre Party.

Legislation of the 1950s and the 1960s also mandated the construction of a network of hospitals, the education of more medical personnel, and from 1963 to the early 1970s, the establishment of a health insurance system.

According to Finland's administrative tradition, it is the task of a ministry and its departments to determine policy, which is then administered by central boards.

An exception to this administrative division was the Social Security Institute, which supervised the national pension plan and health insurance for the Eduskunta and the Council of State.

In the late 1980s, this law, somewhat reformed, was still the basis of Finland's National Pension Plan, which was open to all residents over the age of sixteen, even to those who had never paid into it.

Also tied to the National Pension Plan were payments for handicapped children living at home and for some combat veterans of World War II.

In addition, there were provisions relating to disability, early or late retirement, and survivors' benefits similar to those in effect for the National Pension Plan.

In the 1980s, the daily payment made to make up for losses of income due to illness averaged about 80 percent of a typical wage and could last for as many as 300 workdays.

The act arranged for coverage of all unemployed between the ages of seventeen and sixty-four, resident in Finland, whose income came from wages earned doing work for another person or legal entity.

[1] As of the end of 2017, Finland has paid out more than €4,491 million of unemployment benefits[5] to 369,100 persons, by so providing financial support for 11% of Finnish population between 18 and 64.

[7] Since the first day of January 2017, the Basic Income Experiment, which requires a €560 unconditional monthly payment for 2000 randomly chosen unemployed Finnish citizens, was launched for the 2017-2018 period.

The experiment is organized by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (KELA) and supervised by Olli Kangas, the head of its Research Department.

[8] In April 2018, the government rejected the call for Basic Income Experiment's extra funding;[9] the results of the project will be announced at the end of 2020.

[11] An employee who suffers work-related injuries is financially protected through payments that covered medical and rehabilitation expenses and fully match his or her wages.

The care for children up to seven years of age could be given either in crèche/daycare centres, sometimes private but generally run by local governments, or by accredited baby-sitters, either at the child's home or outside it.

A 1985 law set the goal of being able to allow, by 1990, all parents of children up to the age of three the choice between home-care payments or a place for their child in a crèche/daycare centre.

In the late 1980s, there were some 30,000 mentally handicapped Finns, 10,000 of whom received welfare ranging from living accommodations in an institution to day-center care or jobs in sheltered workshops.

In the 1980s, there were still many abstainers in Finland who had moral objections to alcohol use, in contrast to the small minority of drinkers who accounted for more than half of total national consumption.

In the late 1960s, a relaxation of the rules for the purchase of alcohol had as its goal a lessening of drink's glamorous appeal because it was, in a sense, forbidden.

This policy may have backfired when sales of beer in grocery stores and the availability of hard liquor at more restaurants caused alcohol consumption to more than double within a decade.

Although the number of abstainers had dropped sharply in the postwar period, causing some sociologists to refer to Finns who became adults in the 1950s and the 1960s as "the wet generation," alcohol was gradually coming to take a more ordinary place in everyday life.

Finnish health authorities believed, even in the late 1980s, that care of this kind could be more flexible, humane, and effective and could also check cost increases.

Because most services of health centers were free, subsidies from the national government were required to augment the financial resources of municipalities.

Most centers had midwives, whose high competence, combined with an extensive program of prenatal care, made possible Finland's extremely low infant mortality rate, the world's best at 6.5 deaths per 1,000 births.

In addition, there were institutions with a single concern, such as the sixty psychiatric hospitals, and others that dealt with orthopedics, epilepsy, rheumatism, or plastic surgery.